SIXTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART V. 367 



wide and twelve miles long; originally it was almost uninhabited. It used 

 to be said that it contained nothing but rock, rabbits and cabbages, but 

 it has been transformed into one of the most fertile and productive 

 spots on the globe. There is no place where agriculture exists in as 

 intensive and highly successful form as on the Island of Jersey to-day. 

 It contains only about 28,000 acres and supports a population of nearly 

 53,000 people, a population of over 1200 inhabitants to the square mile 

 covering the entire area, or population of nearly two thousand people 

 per square mile of tillable land. You see what this means. 



The one great industry of that Island in live stock raising is the 

 production of Jersey cattle. In fact they have no other live stock indus- 

 try of any consequence. So far as cattle are concerned, it has been, 

 a crime to import a live male of any breed whatever, simply because 

 they consider they have the best in the Jersey line and they take no 

 chance."5 on contamination by the use of outside blood. These cattle 

 have been developed for the one special purpose of converting high 

 price food products into the most valuable dairy products. They have 

 been developed under conditions of the most intensive agriculture, an 

 agriculture that supports two thousand people per square mile of 

 tillable land, an agriculture conducted in a most favorable climate, a 

 climate in which the flowers bloom all the year long, the range of tempera- 

 ture being from 40 to 80; very rarely do they have frost and very rarely 

 do they have intense heat, never what we w^ould call intense heat here. 

 These conditions permit of the highest development of their crops. A 

 large part of the tillable surface of the island of Guernsey, about one- 

 quarter of it, is farmed under glass; not so large a percentage of Jersey 

 because of the different character of their crops, but the potato, the 

 bean and peas, garden products, clover and the richest grains that can 

 be produced are the chief products. The farms average only about five 

 or six acres in extent; a farm of forty acres is an unusually large one 

 on this island. The herds are limited, as a rule, to small herds of ten 

 or a dozen animals and even lower than that. They are never turned 

 out to pasture but are staked or tethered out and moved three or four 

 times a day and given just a few feet of additional fresh grass, and 

 then moved on and on and brought back over the same space again several 

 weeks later when a new growth has sprung up. In that way they 

 make absolutely the highest utility of all their products. 



Those cows are carefully stabled and handled and fed with the high- 

 est attention, given the richest and choicest of feeds and every possi- 

 ble attention given them to produce the highest output of dairy pro- 

 ducts. They have been developed for centuries for the purpose of pro- 

 ducing dairy products most economically. That in brief is a descrip- 

 tion of the conditions surrounding a Jersey in her native home. They 

 are never fed heavily and abundantly as they are here, which accounts 

 for the difference in the Island type and the American type. "We often 

 hear Jersey breeders discussing the difference between the Island or 

 imported type of Jersey cow and the American type. In America, under 

 our conditions, the more liberal feeding is what we have, producing 

 a larger, somewhat rougher and more vigorous cow with greater capacity. 



